The biggest winner of the shutdown may be the Affordable Care Act. We wrote yesterday that reporters were having trouble tracking down a single person who had signed up for Obamacare on the federal exchanges. We’re happy to report that’s no longer the case: there are at least a handful now. As far as we know, the […]

In a bit of bright news for America’s energy future, the southern portion of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline will be completed by the end of this month, connecting Cushing, Oklahoma with refineries along the Gulf Coast. The pipeline will bust open one of the bigger bottlenecks in America’s energy pipelines, allowing 700,000 barrels of […]

While most Obamacare news is still about the predictable glitches in the online systems, the other day the NYT led with a story on the the millions of low-income America’s who won’t be insured under the ACA. The reason for this coverage gap is the refusal of many red states to expand Medicaid: Because they live […]

There seem to be two realities of the India-Pakistan conflict. There’s the one in which the Prime Ministers of each country met in New York, shook hands, called for a peaceful resolution to their conflict, and lamented the arms race that has been going on since both countries’ inceptions in 1947. Then there’s the other […]

We’ve devoted ample time on this blog to the cities and states who have grossly mismanaged their pension plans, and for good reason: there are far too many of them. But while the big messes get all the press, there are some cities that have been doing it right. They deserve a shout-out once in […]

In May of this year James McCormick was convicted of selling fake bomb detectors to a number of countries, including Iraq, Belgium, Niger and Saudi Arabia. The devices, sold for $42,000, employ roughly the same technology as a golf ball finder and do nothing at all to detect bombs.  But even though they’re known to […]

Not much meat is left on the bones of Detroit’s carcass, but leave it to finance to pick at what’s left. The WSJ reports that a handful of banks from Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg that own $1 billion of bankrupt Detroit bonds will hold out in Michigan court to boost the price of their bonds […]

We’ve written before that critics of Obamacare shouldn’t put too much weight on early glitches and technical failures, but the problems may be even more extensive than we thought. Wonkblog states that reporters haven’t yet been able to locate a single person who has successfully signed up for coverage on the federal exchanges: This is not for […]

By the end of the year, the US will be producing more oil and gas than any other country in the world, displacing Russia, the former number one. That’s the finding of a new analysis conducted by the Wall Street Journal, highlighting the result of what has become a singularly American success story: the shale […]

In Belgium, death is more popular than ever. The BBC reports on Nathan Verhelst, a 44-year-old transsexual who recently opted to euthanize himself  after botched sex change operations. This case might seem like an outlier; the man in question clearly had psychological problems. But then you take a look at the overall numbers on the growth of euthanasia […]